Monte Cook's first Legends and Lore is up

[delericho]

Have you never actually RUN a mystery adventure?

Actually, as it happens I'm running an entire mystery campaign right now!

The worst thing in the world would be to prepare a complex intricate mystery, and have the players miss the first few clues; half an hour in and they're standing around going "What the hell are we suppose to do? THIS SUCKS."

If there is a mystery they must solve in order to resolve the adventure then YES, you guarantee, somehow, that the players WILL solve it. If the secret door leads to something they MUST do, or have, or know, then you guarantee that they WILL find it. If the players NEED to figure it out in order to move forward, than failure to figure it out means the game is over, just as surely as if you TPKd them.

All of this is true. If the players must find the 'secret' door, or must find a specific clue, then the DM must, at the end of the day, find a way to give it to them.

But that's a bad way to design a mystery game. You need to build in multiple layers of redundancy, because PCs will miss some (or many) of your clues. You probably even need multiple mysteries going on, so if they get stuck on one front they can still progress on others. And so on.

(Also, you want at least some clues that aren't found by rolling the dice - if the players think to speak to NPC X, they automatically get a clue; the victim's home has some clues out in plain sight, whatever.)

But, in any case, I wasn't talking about a mystery adventure, since that's a fairly unusual type of adventure with special design considerations. I was instead addressing a more 'typical' D&D scenario. In such a scenario there generally shouldn't be any secret door that the party must find, or a riddle that they must solve. And, moreover, I take the view that both the DMs and the designers must adopt the view that it's okay if some of these mysteries go unfound in play. (Because if it's tied to the dice, the rolls may suck. If it's tied to player skill, they may not ask the right questions. Either way, if something is hidden, it may well never be found.)

 

[KarinsDad]

All of this is true. If the players must find the 'secret' door, or must find a specific clue, then the DM must, at the end of the day, find a way to give it to them.

But that's a bad way to design a mystery game. You need to build in multiple layers of redundancy, because PCs will miss some (or many) of your clues. You probably even need multiple mysteries going on, so if they get stuck on one front they can still progress on others. And so on.

(Also, you want at least some clues that aren't found by rolling the dice - if the players think to speak to NPC X, they automatically get a clue; the victim's home has some clues out in plain sight, whatever.)

DMing 101 for mysteries.

If the PCs absolutely have to find out about the bad guys at the old mine, don't hand the old mine to the players on a silver platter.

Have clues to the old mine at the tavern, at the temple, at the mayor's house, and when the PCs fight the Orcs.

But, in any case, I wasn't talking about a mystery adventure, since that's a fairly unusual type of adventure with special design considerations. I was instead addressing a more 'typical' D&D scenario. In such a scenario there generally shouldn't be any secret door that the party must find, or a riddle that they must solve. And, moreover, I take the view that both the DMs and the designers must adopt the view that it's okay if some of these mysteries go unfound in play. (Because if it's tied to the dice, the rolls may suck. If it's tied to player skill, they may not ask the right questions. Either way, if something is hidden, it may well never be found.)

Precisely.

DMs are a diverse group of people. Some create a world and let their PCs explore and what the PCs find, the PCs find. No special hints. Other DMs design their worlds as a work of art. The players must see every tiny detail because the DM has spent tons of hours on this really cool masterpiece that he has put together and he wants to showcase every last part of it.

Although both styles can be fun, I've always preferred the former because the latter seems like railroading to me. I've seen DMs go way out of their way to overtly or covertly force PCs in a given direction, just so that the players could see this cool thing that the DM created over here. Not my cup of tea.

Having the PCs find every secret door or solve every riddle is just a subset of this approach.


Interestingly enough, our one DM recently had a pictorial combination lock on a door riddle where the PCs had to push certain portions of the picture in a certain combination in order to open the door. Pushing the wrong combination resulted in damage. The way to solve the riddle was to explore the rest of the dungeon (fighting through some really nasty monsters) to find similar pictures that ended up giving the players clues as to how to open the door.

This to me is vastly superior to more traditional riddles that players have to either figure out on their own, or they wait for skill check rolls to give them DM hints until they finally get it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I see what you're saying, and I agree that if it happens they way you suggest, it wouldn't work so well.

However, there is clearly room for them to do things a little more like Magic, and a bit like they've been doing Encounters - where this year, everything is assuming (or mandating) you use the Option Series X books (like Essentials), while next "season" it will be Option Series Y. There can always be "official" versions in play, but for home games, you can combine as you like.

And I don't think that some of the materials would be so drastically different that, say, adventures published would be unusable. At worst, I could see there being a "conversion" sidebar to help smooth over oddball interactions when mixing options.

Yeah, I'm tempted to say I just want a game that has some rules and sticks to them, and that they are hopefully the ones I like. Of course that could be seen as both a bit self-serving and narrow minded of me, lol.

So, I'll hope they do exactly what I want, but since that rarely happens in this world and sometimes it is better to be happy with what you get instead of unhappy about what you don't get, well, I'm sure I'll live. Worst case if they do what you're proposing then I have the books on my shelf. In the long run it will be interesting to see what they dream up. Some of it will no doubt be interesting. One thing is for sure, if you're right it will be FAR from the worst possibility in my book. That would be more like "Eh, 4e sucked, we're doing something totally different now and guess what, it's going to look like AD&D!" Not that it was a bad game, but not the one I'd really like to play nowadays.

Anyway, it is all chatter, what will happen will happen, and IME game design shops are remarkably resistant to suggestions that people might not like whatever they're cooking this year, lol. Sit back and enjoy the ride!